Pupil Premium

ACADEMIC PRIORITIES

From April 2015, nurseries, schools, childminders and other childcare providers will be able to claim extra funding through the Early Years Pupil Premium to support children’s development, learning and care. We wanted to write to you to explain what the Early Years Pupil Premium is, explain who is eligible for this funding and, importantly, to ask you to fill out the enclosed forms so that we as a provider can claim the extra funding.

National data and research tells that children eligible for free school meals tend to do less well, for example in 2014, 45% of children eligible for free school meals achieved the expected level at the end of the early years foundation stage compared with 64%% of other children. The Early Years Pupil Premium will provide us with extra funding to close this gap.

The Early Years Pupil Premium provides an extra 53 pence per hour for three and four year old children whose parents are in receipt of certain benefits or who were formally in local authority care but who left care because they were adopted or were subject to a special guardianship or child arrangements order. This means an extra £302 a year for each child taking up the full 570 hours funded entitlement to early education. This additional money could make a significant difference to us.

We can use the extra funding in any way we choose to improve the quality of the early years’ education that we provide for your child. This could include for example additional training for our staff on early language, investing in partnership working with our colleagues in the area to further our expertise or supporting our staff in working on specialised areas such as speech and language.

It is well documented that high quality early education can influence how well a child does at both primary and secondary school so we do want to make the most of this additional funding. You may be aware if you have older children that a pupil premium has been available for school age children and it has proved to have given a real boost to the children receiving the funding. We want to do the same for our early years children entitled to this funding.

Therefore we ask that ALL PARENTS/GUARDIANS fill in the attached form (Click here). This will allow us to claim the additional Early Years Pupil Premium.

The Government believes that the Pupil Premium, which is an allocation of additional funding (to main Academy funding), is the best way to support specific groups of children who are vulnerable to possible underachievement and to address the gap in their educational attainment.

These include children:

who have been eligible for free school meals (FSM) at some point in the last six years;

who have been in care for more than six months (CLA);

whose parents are currently employed by the armed services.

Nationally, the statistics show that pupils who are in receipt of FSM, do less well than their peers in exams, for example: SATs. All schools are therefore required to report on the amount of funding received and how this is being used; alongside the impact of the funding, once available.

Principles for supporting pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium Funding:

At Angel Oak Academy, we view the needs of all our children as important and ensure that our teaching and learning opportunities meet the needs of all of them;

We ensure that appropriate provision is made for all pupils who belong to vulnerable groups;

We recognise that not all pupils who receive free school meals are socially disadvantaged (or indeed underachieving) and not all pupils who are socially disadvantaged are eligible for free school meals;

Pupil Premium funding will be allocated based on a needs analysis, reflecting these considerations, which will identify priority classes, groups or individuals.